sippor:

On Thursday I was working on some Dawson’s Creek episode where Joey makes out with her professor and he cuts off their relationship by telling her about Sentimental Education. He says, “Flaubert believed that anticipation was the purest form of pleasure… and the most reliable. And that while the things that actually happen to you would invariable disappoint, the things that never happened to you would never dim. Never fade. They would always be engraved in your heart with a sort of sweet sadness.” Having only read Madame Bovary for the scandal and never Sentimental Education, I did not know any of this in word form and I am a little bit sad that watching Dawson’s Creek at work is how I came to discover the articulation of the truest thing in the world.